SpecialEffect Open The Call For Heroes Of Video Game Music Band Members!

Disabled gamers’ charity SpecialEffect and Kickstarter project Heroes of Video Game Music today opened the call for industry supporters to join the ‘SpecialEffect All-Stars’, a band being assembled to create a unique track for an upcoming album celebrating video game composers of all eras.

The Heroes of Video Game Music project was launched on Kickstarter on June 27th, hitting its funding goal in less than five days. The brainchild of experienced game composer and sound engineer Rik Ede, and sponsored by Dolby and The Chairworks recording studio in Leeds, its goal is to showcase and celebrate the unsung talents of over 20 of the industry’s most experienced composers including World of Warcraft’s Tracy W. Bush, Donkey Kong Country’s Robin Beanland, Streets of Rage’s Motohiro Kawashima and Unreal’s Alexander Brandon.

Ede, himself disabled after several severe strokes left him unable to work, was also keen to join forces with SpecialEffect to help highlight the fact that music creation can be enjoyed by everyone, regardless of the nature or severity of their disability. The idea came about to create an original track for the album that would feature contributions from the SpecialEffect team and several of their industry ambassadors. The track will also feature a number of the disabled people supported by the charity, using a variety of different technologies to enable even the most severely disabled among them to create sound effects, melodies, guitar riffs and other elements that will then be mixed and produced by Ede himself.

Ede explains: “I was deeply impressed and inspired by the scope of SpecialEffect’s work and was delighted that they agreed to join the project. I’m looking forward to working with the ‘All-Stars’ and I’m sure we’ll create something quite magical.”

Dr Mick Donegan, founder and CEO of SpecialEffect, is equally pleased to be involved: “We were thrilled to be asked to play a part in the Heroes of Video Game Music project and already have several of the disabled people we work with really keen to join in. We’re also pleased to announce that two of our industry ambassadors (Mastertronic’s Andy Payne and Press Space PR’s Natalie Griffith) have already joined the All-Stars band and we’re now throwing down the gauntlet for some of our other industry supporters to come on board too.”

Musical prowess or experience aren’t necessary, so anyone keen to get involved should contact SpecialEffect here.

The Heroes of Video Game Music Kickstarter campaign is still open for pledges until midnight on Sunday 28th July and is close to its second stretch goal target. The finished album will be mixed and produced later this year and released in early 2014. Deluxe editions will feature behind-the-scenes footage of the making of the album, including the creation of the SpecialEffect track.

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